Pointwise Relations

The relational calculus has found many applications in computer science, but it is not in widespread use. One reason for its unpopularity is the high degree of "formal noise", caused by the absence of bound variables. In this talk, we suggest an alternative view of relations, as an extended lambda-calculus with primitives for choice, intersection, converse and so on. We motivate its use by an example from program derivation, and then sketch the semantics. The talk concludes with an open problem regarding the consistency between traditional semantics of lambda calculi, and the relational interpretation given here.

Exploratory Paper